Even with a thirty-plus-year career behind him, it seems Will Smith is still just getting started. The A-list star is on the latest cover of GQ Magazine, where he breaks his silence on that viral Red Table Talk episode and the intricacies of his marriage to Jada Pinkett Smith.
Wesley Lowery‘s story for GQ is entitled Introducing the Real Will Smith, and it wastes no time getting right to some deep aspects of Smith’s life. Conducted in July while Smith was in production for the Apple TV+ project Emancipation, Smith opened up about his entire career, and how he has gotten to where he is now, but the most intriguing part of the feature is when he dives into his upcoming memoir and what he reveals (and doesn’t) about his marriage in it.
The bombshell Red Table Talk interview with Will and Jada from last year saw the power couple take back the narrative, after news of Jada’s “entanglement” with August Alsina during a period where the couple explored non-monogamy in their marriage, theGrio extensively reported.
Opening up about the freedom that particular interview gave the couple, Smith shares in the GQ profile, “The pursuit of truth is the only way to be happy in this lifetime, and we sort of came to the agreement that authenticity was the release from the shackles of fame and public scrutiny.”
With Smith’s memoir set to hit bookshelves this year, Lowery reveals in the profile that much of the couple’s marriage woes seen in the public were left out of the manuscript he was given prior to the interview. Responding to why some things were left out, Smith goes deep. He reveals that “Jada never believed in conventional marriage.”
He explains, “Jada had family members that had an unconventional relationship. So she grew up in a way that was very different than how I grew up. There were significant endless discussions about, what is relational perfection? What is the perfect way to interact as a couple? And for the large part of our relationship, monogamy was what we chose, not thinking of monogamy as the only relational perfection.”
“We have given each other trust and freedom, with the belief that everybody has to find their own way. And marriage for us can’t be a prison,” he continues. “And I don’t suggest our road for anybody. I don’t suggest this road for anybody. But the experiences that the freedoms that we’ve given one another and the unconditional support, to me, is the highest definition of love.”
A lot of this personal information, Smith reveals, was left out of the book after much back and forth. He ultimately decided that “It felt like it was a whole book unto itself,” as he would have to tell other people’s stories as well, not just his.
Read the full feature in GQ, here.
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